Trimming your work force without smart legal advice is like performing surgery without a doctor. You may remove what you intended, but the complications could be deadly.

Even if you do everything right, a disgruntled worker may still file a lawsuit. Doing your homework upfront will get you out of court faster.

If layoffs haven't hit your company yet, consider this: U.S. firms cut more than 650,000 jobs in the first five months of this year, more than they did in all of 2000, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Avoid the pitfalls:

Set the stage correctly

Your foundation for defending layoff decisions is grounded in other good employment practices. That includes making sure that employees understand when their employment is "at will," and either they or you can terminate it at any point.

In some cases, you may have to rescind a job offer even before the new employee starts work. So be careful ab...(register to read more)

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Monday's Training:

Most readers of reports and emails are skeptical of the information contained in documents that are riddled with easily corrected surface errors. Don't let yours be one of them....Click here to find out more.